


there's a hell of a good universe next door

by morningstar921



Series: pity poor flesh and bones [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: But not all the time, Emotional Hurt, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Internalized racism, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, MCU Loki - Freeform, Multiverse Loki, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, loki has a terrible time, minor but it's still there, the multiverse is not kind, two loki's for the price of one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21910738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningstar921/pseuds/morningstar921
Summary: Loki dips into a neighboring timeline to steal the key to his manacles from Asgard. Deep in the dungeons, he runs into someone familiar.Or: there is something deeply unsettling about this other timeline, and Loki can't shake the feeling that he's lost something.(sequel to "with bound tongue")
Series: pity poor flesh and bones [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578193
Comments: 11
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by e.e. cummings's poem "pity this busy monster manunkind"

Asgard has not changed in his absence. Or rather, this other Asgard looks no different than his own. Same golden city, same towering palace. Just emptier, somehow. He touches down in an obscure hallway tucked away in the palace’s bowels, one he remembers from childhood games with Thor (and isn’t that a barb in his side). Odd that even here there is no echo of voices, no stomp of footsteps passing nearby. An Asgard quiet and still is an Asgard unnatural. 

But then, this is not _his_ Asgard. This is another’s Loki’s realm. Maybe that one is fortunate enough to afford some silence every now and then. Still, it would hardly be worth the risk to just waltz in, hands bound and body beaten, and hope against all hope he wouldn’t invite suspicion. So he adjusts his grip on the Tesseract, scowling when it clips one of his cracked fingernails, turns the corner with a cautious step, and descends into the dungeons. 

Empty cell upon empty cell, all along the walls of the dungeons. There are no guards posted, either. This is enough to give Loki pause. Is this Asgard a peaceful one? An Asgard with no political opponents or petty thieves or troublemakers? He smirks. More likely an Asgard too dull to find fault in anyone.

He finds the warden’s personal holding quickly -- a small inlet in the wall with just enough room for a small table, a couple of chairs, and a desk. It is, like the rest of the dungeon, surprisingly without people. Loki steps in and takes stock of the space. “Now if I were a daft warden, where would I stash my keys?” On a ring attached to their belt loop, no doubt, but even then there must be a spare lying around. There’s a keyhole in one of the desk drawers. Loki bashes the drawer in with a couple solid kicks and digs through the smashed wood until his fingers hit upon a set of keys.

Holding the keys between his teeth, Loki finds the correct one in only a couple of tries, slotting it into the manacles about his wrists until they fall slack at his ankles with a clang. The noise reverberates off the cold stone walls. Grinning, Loki flexes his wrists. He kicks the manacles into a corner. 

Loki starts backtracking through the dungeons. While he’s here, he figures he might as well explore the palace one last time. It’s not as if he has much of a reason to return. At the thought, there’s a sudden pang in his stomach. It’s sharper than it should be; this palace, this realm, and all the others beside it, were nothing more than play-pretend homes. A wanderer is he, a wanderer until death. 

Now his chest tightens up and he has to stop a moment to catch his breath before it starts thundering. The Tesseract weighs heavily in his hands. And that’s when he hears, from down the corridor to his left, a sigh. 

Loki straightens up; he had hunched over without thinking. The dungeon is silent again. Turning down the corridor he’d heard the sigh, shoulders squared back, he comes across the only occupied cell in the palace’s underbelly. Though blindingly white and sterile, the cell is simply furnished -- odd, but perhaps not uncharacteristic for this other world -- and there is a man curled up on a chaise at the far end of the cell. His face is turned away from Loki. Still as he is, Loki might have thought the man asleep.

“What kind of monster might you be,” Loki says, a laugh slipping over his tongue, “to be Asgard’s only prisoner?”

“The worst kind,” the man says, all slippery and full of spite, and turns over on his side. 

Loki prides himself on his illusion work. It is always best, he finds, to shapeshift the truth into something else until such a time as the truth cuts sharper than lies. It’s why lying comes so easily: he masks his face just as well as his tongue. But not even a lifetime of carefully crafted expressions could disguise the shock of seeing his own face reflected back at him, however pale and gaunt. He distinctly dislikes the way this Other-Loki’s lips curl up in a silent laugh at his expense.

Then again, does it really come as a shock to see himself imprisoned, and by the All-Father no less? A monster, Loki thinks, is bound to be a monster across the whole universe. You cannot change the base components of a thing. 

Other-Loki does not move from the chaise, content to sneer while stretched out like a fat cat in the midday sun. His props his head up with a fist. “Is one Loki not enough to slake the All-Father’s wrath? I never took him for a sadist, but I’ve been wrong before.”

“I’m not from here,” Loki says dumbly. He clenches the Tesseract closer to his chest. He doesn’t miss how the Other-Loki’s eyes seem painfully drawn to its glow. He feels, not for the first time today, uneasy. 

“I figured. I don’t recall setting any clones loose, and any doppelganger would be a fool to show his face here.” Other-Loki smiles with too many sharp teeth, looks down to lazily pick at something under his nails -- cracked and brittle-looking, just like Loki’s. “Which begs the question: where are you from and what are you doing here? Were you the one tramping around with the shackles earlier?”

Loki narrows his eyes; he thought he’d been quieter, but it was awfully hard to sneak around in clanging metal chains. 

Other-Loki stretches and pulls himself into a sitting position. “I’d ask where you got the chains from but, well, I’m sure I could guess.” He sweeps his hand across the cell. “Is stirring up trouble a favorite pastime for all Lokis?”

“Something like that.” Loki’s keeps his voice terse. He’s grown tired of this Other-Loki’s quips. He wonders briefly is this is how Thor feels but immediately shakes the thought loose. He turns his tongue on his Other. “And you? What’d you do to get stuck down here? Play one too many tricks on Thor? Push the old man down some stairs?”

“Mm. Something like that.” Cheeky bastard. Other-Loki extends a pointed finger. “Nice cube. A lot of people would pay a pretty price for that thing.”

Loki shifts the Tesseract behind his back. “You got a point?”

As though a string had been snapped, Other-Loki’s gaze jerks away to a point by his feet. “No. No point.” Loki isn’t sure if Other-Loki realizes his hands have drawn up into fists or that his brow is strained. 

“Awfully quiet down here,” Loki says, but Other-Loki interrupts.

“You never told me where you’re from or why you’re here.”

“I was under the impression that I didn’t have to.”

“Hm.”

Thick and bloated, an awkward silence swells between them. Other-Loki’s eyes are dark and penetrating from across his cell. He fiddles with a lock of hair, seemingly content to twiddle his thumbs in silence all day if he must. Loki supposes Other-Loki doesn’t get much in the way of entertainment stowed away as he is in the All-Father’s dungeons. Loki himself begins the fiddle with the Tesseract behind his back, shifting its weight between his hands, and asks again, “I don’t suppose you know where all the prisoners went.”

Other-Loki ducks his head with a sly grin. “Prisoner break,” he says, though his voice is dulled. 

“And yet you’re still here.”

“So I am.”

“You’re not going to elaborate on that?”

“No, I don’t believe I am.”

There’s that silence again. “I should go.” Loki doesn’t know why he bothers saying this. As if Other-Loki’s protests, if he dared to even have any, would make any difference at all.

“So soon?” Like a cat, Other-Loki stretches his limbs and reclines on the chaise again. “Here I thought we were having a rousing discussion. Do come back soon.” He turns his sharp eyes and barbed teeth at Loki, who feels their pressure until he turns the corner.

Loki draws the Tesseract back in front of him. Suddenly he is not in the mood to explore the palace or any of Asgard. A haze of dark smoke once more envelops Loki and whisks him away to the first place he can think of: the cold plains of Northern Midgard. Call it childhood nostalgia or a poor choice, it never matters in the end.


	2. Chapter 2

Loki returns to his proper place in the multiverse on the edge of a frozen cliffside. His breaths, deep and steady, come in puffs of frosted air. The ground is stiff, but there’s no snow on the ground. Tucking the Tesseract into his personal pocket of space, Loki sits on the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling over the rocky cliffside and the pulsing sea below. 

Northern Midgard always felt like Jotunheim growing up, without the permanent tundra and the brutish Frost Giants towering overhead. Even the frostbite was milder here, too weak to burn Loki’s skin no matter how long he and Thor spent trampling through blizzards. Thor had always tired of the cold more quickly than Loki; his ears and cheeks would turn a furious red and ache when thawing by the fire. Meanwhile, it had seemed Loki could spend days in the cold without ever feeling the chill. With all he knows now, Loki supposes there’s an easy enough explanation for that. Frost Giants can’t exactly tire of the cold, now can they?

He cannot shake the Other-Loki from his mind. It’s not surprising to find one of his selves imprisoned -- he’s destined for quite more than that if he were to ever find his way back to Asgard, if not for his toil with treason then for his crusade against Thor’s precious Midgard. A prison cell would not be cruel enough. 

Which begs the question: what has this Other-Loki done to deserve a cell not the executioner? Surely Odin, even across the multiverse, would rather put down his sick dog of a son than let him rot in shame beneath the palace? 

Loki plucks a blade of iced-over grass and twists it between his fingers. It is brittle and snaps apart. Perhaps this Other-Loki’s Odin simply needed a reason to be rid of his foundling son. Leave a leashed Jotunn lying loose for too long and it will bite like the beast it is. Loki considers this. Any misdeed would do. Hold a closed trial and not even the nobles would need to know the specifics. Poor Prince Loki’s gone astray, they’d think, and then think nothing else. There are no second thoughts to spare for the second prince. And Odin could wipe his hands of the matter as though there’d never been as much as a drop of blood on his skin. 

The old man probably wishes he’d done that to me earlier, Loki thinks. I’ve gone and mucked that up for him now, haven’t I? Treason is too big a stain. 

The thought is not as sweet as Loki would prefer. 

Loki lets the crashing of waves against the cliffside deafen him. He moves a little ways away from the cliffside and lays down in the open. There are no trees to buffer him from the wind, nor anything to hide himself behind. He won’t be returning to this timeline next time he jumps the multiverse. But neither can he be found in a night, not by Odin or Thor or the Mad Titan himself. Not here, on a barren cliff he hasn’t even thought of in centuries. 

He falls asleep clutching his sharpest blade anyway.

* * *

Loki dreams of a prison break. Not his, but another prisoner’s. He is behind bars, much like Other-Loki had been, and from down the cell block there’s screaming and the guards have drawn their weapons. A horde of Kursed make off in a hurry past his cell. They’re quickly apprehended by the guards, except for one of their numbers. This Kursed, glaring from behind its mask of a face, approaches Loki’s cell. It stands there, it looks at him. It turns away just as quickly with a grunt. And Loki, watching the creature intently, offers up his voice: “You might want to take the stairs to the left.”

And then the dream crashes, lost to the twitter of a stray nightjar in the trees.

The sun only barely rises over the cliffside. It dies the sky a wash of bloody hues. Loki sits up slowly, blinks himself blearily back to awareness. His clothes are damp from the frost he slept on, stiffened as if starch-pressed by the cold. With a short burst of seidr, his clothes right themselves. 

He runs a hand through his hair, clears it from his face. What an odd dream, he thinks. He hasn’t dreamed this vividly in centuries, not since childhood left him behind. This place must stink with the residue of those times. He should go.

_No barren moon,_ the back of his mind taunts, and he waves it away alongside any lingering thoughts of that dream. Time to formulate a plan, find a new planet and a new universe to hop to. It’s not running away, it’s biding his time. Never mind that the two look alike. 

Where to go, though, is the question. Where to go, that no one would be looking for him or any blasted configuration of him. Loki considers slipping backwards in the timestream, back a couple thousand years or more. He could stay on this little backward world, shrouded by its insignificancy. A precaution, against the rest of the universe. Yes, that sounds nice, he decides. So once more he unloads the Tesseract from his pocket in space and disappears.

He does not think of that dream for the rest of the day, nor of the Kursed or the dream-Loki who had looked startlingly like that Other-Loki confined in his cell. Not until past nightfall, not until another dream has him crawling out of his own skin.

* * *

In this one the Kursed is back and its fists beat into Thor -- this must be a nightmare if Thor’s here. But this Loki of the dream races to the scene as if death were clipping at his heels. There’s a large sword in his hand, and he impales the giant Kursed through the back.

It feels like a victory, however odd it is to save Thor these days. Then the Kursed grabs Loki and thrusts the sword into his chest now and it feels like the worst agony of his life. Worst than the Titan’s wrath even because there’s something more to lose than himself now. It is a startling revelation to make.

Loki wakes up choking on scream. The Tesseract is in his hands, a deep blue glow at midnight that hurts to look at. He vanishes into the multiverse without thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a filler chapter, but it's been so long since I last updated and I wanted to get something else out. Future updates will continue to be sporadic, life is hectic right now y'all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for disappearing from this story for so long. I lost track of where I wanted it to go, but I things seem to be back on track now. I plan to write a bunch of the story ahead of time so even if life gets in the way, the story won't remain in limbo for months again.
> 
> For now: enjoy this short update!

The Tesseract takes him to Svartalheim, mid-battle. There’s Thor being thrown down by the Kursed, and there’s an Other-Loki rushing to the scene, that giant sword in his hands. Loki watches from a distance as, so it was in his dream, his counterpart spears the Kursed on the blade and is in turn speared by the same sword himself. 

Other-Loki spasms on the ground and the Kursed combusts around a hole torn in the universe. Thor, the foolish oaf, gathers the Other-Loki in his arms and sobs as some poison on the blade engulfs Other-Loki’s skin. Until Other-Loki’s eyes close and the blood bubbling from the wound in his chest stills. 

So death hunts him like a dog here too. Loki’s mouth runs dry and it hurts to swallow past the tightness of his throat. And for all that he hates Thor, he can’t ignore the tenderness in the way Thor cradles this Other’s body, even when that woman of his wraps her arms around his shoulders and tells him they have to go. Would his Thor, Loki wonders, hold him dying like that?

(Banish the thought before it hurts too much)

Thor grabs his Jane Foster around the waist, raises his choked voice to Heimdall, and vanishes in the Bifrost. Loki is left alone with his own corpse. He ventures to the corpse’s side with a stumbling curiosity. The sword left a jagged hole where it cleaved through Other-Loki’s ribs. Loki frees one hand from its fierce grip on the Tesseract to rub away a trickle of blood from Other-Loki’s mouth. Loki jerks away when the corpse shivers under his touch. He does not stick around long enough to know if it’s a death throe or the faintest stirring to life.

The stream of time and space is slippery. Thought as it appears in Loki’s mind is equally so. He touches down on his Midgardian cliffside for barely half a second before he has the Tesseract whisk him off through the multiverse again. He does not realize he has it sending him back to the first Other-Loki’s cell, nor to the scene of this alter’s jailbreak. He needs to know if this too is just as real as his death at the Kursed’s hands. Prophetics were Frigga’s forte, never his. What a shame it would be if her foundling son, the stray prince with no proper use for it, were the one to inherit her fortuitous gift. 

He touches down by Other-Loki’s cell and tucks the Tesseract out of sight. Amidst the riot of a prison break, no one spares a second Loki a spare glance. He stays tucked out of sight in the swirling ruckus as he watches his dream unfold around him: the Kursed approaching Other-Loki’s cell, its dismissal of him, and the simple words Other-Loki offers to its back. Loki is uncomprehending: there is no reason for any of this to be true.

But it is, he tells himself, and promptly follows the Kursed down the hall.

This passage leads back into the main passage. Telling the beast to escape into here is either a cruel joke at the beast’s expense or a spot of mischief to entrench the nobles in. Only the halls are clear this day and the Kursed, lost as only a dumb brute can be, wanders into a small dais. And standing with her blade pressed against a Dark Elf’s throat is Frigga. 

“Mother,” Loki says. The word is a soft exhale over his tongue. He never thought he’d her again. Afraid to startle her, he lurks just past the threshold, watching. When the Kursed grabs her from behind, he tenses, reaching for a weapon until he realizes he has none. 

The Dark Elf saunters across the room and suddenly Loki’s attention is drawn to Jane Foster. Why is it always that woman, everywhere? He shifts his attention back to his mother. This is dangerous, he should do something. But what could he do that wouldn’t frighten the beast into tightening its arm around her neck? A cold sweat beads on the back of his neck. 

“Where is the Aether?” the Dark Elf asks. Jane Foster is gone. His mother’s face has gone smug.

“I’ll never tell you,” Frigga says. 

The Dark Elf, voice laced thick with disappointment, says, “I believe you,” and the Kursed stabs Loki’s mother through the back. Loki’s breath chokes off quick, as if he were the one impaled.

A bolt of lightning strikes the Dark Elf in the face, and Loki scrambles backwards down the hall, back into the dungeons.


	4. Chapter 4

The dungeons are deathly quiet. Loki cannot clear from his mind the sight of his mother’s blood or the gasping hitch of her last breath. All the world is off-kilter like a nightmare. The All-Mother is dead, and it’s all that _bastard’s_ fault. 

“You killed her!” Loki screeches to cell after empty cell. “You killed her!” He stops at the foot of Other-Loki’s cell. His Other doesn’t even have the decency to look at him, picking at his nails half-heartedly. “Look at me, you fucking bastard!”

Other-Loki, with a sigh, turns his head towards his visitor’s. His eyes go wide when he sees his own mirror image glaring at him. “Oh, well isn’t this interesting. I didn’t think the world could handle more than one of me.”

“Don’t start with me. Is everything a joke to you?”

“Depends.” Other-Loki rises to his feet with all the grace of a sleek cat, nine lives and all. “Most things are funny if you spin them the right way, wouldn’t you agree?” He cocks his head at the Tesseract. “I never thought I’d see that thing again. Who are you? Or rather, what are you?”

“I’m not doing this again. I--” Loki vanishes the Tesseract and grinds his teeth. It feels like his body is boiling from the inside out. A tear threatens to leak from his eye.

Other-Loki scoffs. “Again? Hm.” He crosses his cell until he’s at the very edge of it, looking down his nose at Loki. “Alright, I’ll bite. What were you saying about murder?”

“You killed her.” Loki’s voice is but a low growl.

“Mm, yes, you said that, but who? It’s rather difficult to kill from inside a cage.”

“Frigga. The All-Mother.” A hitch in Loki’s throat strangles his next breath. “You sent the beast after her, and you killed her.” So much death dripping from his fingertips, multiverse after multiverse, Frigga’s but a drop in the ocean heavy as a rock. For a cosmic joke, it’s gotten old fast. 

Other-Loki is solemnly still in his cell. His hands, crossed behind his back, tighten fractionally. Ever the liar, he says tonelessly, “I haven’t killed anyone, let alone her. You must have me confused with another Loki.”

“But you sent the Kursed into the palace. You may not have swung the sword or ordered her execution, but your orders led it to her nonetheless.” Cruel, vicious hatred replaces red-hot grief. Approaching the cell, Loki splays his hands against the light-barrier and looks up at the Other-Loki. “You killed her,” he says, a knell, catharsis leeched like blood from his own reflection and oh, how lovely it is to watch him bleed.

Other-Loki’s voice is shaken. He trembles with it. “Get out.”

“You’re going to rot in this cell, and you deserve to.” Loki starts off down the dungeons, deeper and deeper into the holds. 

To his retreating back, the Other-Loki says in a piercing wail finally drawn from his cold reserve, “Don’t act so righteous. There’s a cell waiting for you somewhere, too. There’s a cell for every last one of us.”

Loki keeps walking and does not turn around; he won’t be goaded. He yanks the Tesseract out of space and jolts away to his cliff on Midgard. 

He knows those words to be true.

* * *

The rush of grief catches up to him like lost breath. A blizzard engulfs the cliffside. Loki is driven to his knees. It’s not even his own mother dead -- she’s another Loki’s Frigga, another universe’s Frigga, and she’s never been more than a changeling’s nursemaid anyway. For a fleeting, hysterical moment, Loki wonders if there’s not a universe where Frigga birthed him as her real son. 

Murky blue mottles at his fingertips like frostbite. When thick, scarred ridges crawl along his knuckles and up his arms, Loki knows it to be a blue far worse: his own natural skin come to reclaim him in the cold. It’s like all his sins flayed bare. 

Loki’s hands fly up to his mouth to tamp down a sick laugh. The snow continues to fall in thick flakes; his monster’s hide refuses to shiver with it, so instead it shakes with violent tremors.

_No barren moon,_ no barren cliffside, and he would almost deserve it, wouldn’t he? If I were rightly in Asgard, Loki thinks, would I have also led Mother to her death before Odin let the executioner's blade swing? 

“I’m right here!” Loki shrieks into the storm, voice swallowed up in the winds. “I’m right here, why don’t you come and take me already!” The back of Loki’s throat burns like vomit; a monster’s words are always poisoned. 

No one comes.

By the time the blizzard ends, Loki has screamed himself ragged. His eyes droop, his limbs are limp. The grief he has no right to rages on undisturbed. Crawling to the edge of the cliff, swinging his legs over the ledge, he offers his Other-Frigga her death rites. “I bid you take your place,” he says, clawing at his own strange markings. When he is done, scuttles away from the edge before his body tips itself over in exhaustion.

He lays down to sleep, whimpering, and dreams again of the multiverse.


End file.
